The poems in this dark and hopeful book evoke a ghostly quality, as if reaching for the ethereal might make the tangible more vital, as if we must always bring along our ghosts. Strange elements float in this suspension: cake and pliers, dragonflies and faucets, creation and keys. The hands-on material of these poems rushes forward all at once, lifted and hurled by the sense that the cosmos is a great metaphysical flood. These are strange compositions, indeed, but they recognize with great force that the world itself is strangely composed.

Maurice Manning

There are many poets who go by the name Laurie Saurborn Young in CARNAVORIA. Some tender, some teasing, some sassy, some will break your heart. All of them impossible to say enough about. Read these poems. Let them offer their means of transport. Patient, quick, gentle, ornery, calm, tough, surprising, loving, fearless and fierce, generous, frank, clear and true. Here is the best inch in view.

Dara Wier

Laurie Saurborn Young is a poet, writer and photographer, and has worked in factories, in the mental health field, and with hospice organizations. She holds an MFA from the low-residency program for writers at Warren Wilson College, and has studied in the Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her photographs have been exhibited in Austin, Texas, and Southampton, New York. Paul’s Window II, her photograph of the NYC skyline, appeared on the cover of the book Fall Higher. She lives in Austin, Texas.